Leng Tch’e are a Belgian grindcore outfit of some repute, but they’re new to me despite Razorgrind being their sixth album. It’s often difficult to pick specific moments out of grindcore – Leng Tch’e, loosely, is a translation of ‘death by a thousand cuts’, which is not a coincidence – but this record takes its foot off the gas just enough for the odd titanic groove to take over. These boys sure love a riff. The opening three songs follow this pattern and ‘Cibus’ shows off a little hint of Slayer in its vocal. ‘Spore’ is thrashier still, and in these deviations Razorgrind escapes the grindcore crowd without ever disowning it. Banging.

You can’t just listen to Time Well, the second full-length from Cloakroom. You have to wallow in it, and when you do that it’s a thoroughly rewarding album. Stylistically it’s said to be a kind of sludgy and epic emo, but the reality is it’s just pretty difficult to classify. Some albums benefit from being allowed to just drop ever so slightly into the background. This is one of them. It’s not there to be ignored, but allowing the mind to drift elsewhere lets the fuzzy and sparse soundscapes of Time Well to take over at a more unconscious level. Yet there’s something here for rock fans of most persuasions, from the heavy riffing of stoner doom to the trippy end of Brand New.

Cold Hard Concrete is the debut full-length album from Chicago nasty bastards Ledge. Sludge is a broad church and this record is on the opposite flank to Cloakroom, offering up 32 minutes of viciously aggressive hardcore-infused noise. There are riffs and beatdowns aplenty, and extended periods of punch after punch after punch, best evidenced in the middle of appropriately named opener ‘Through Your Skull’. The beginning of ‘Blacked Out’ shows off Ledge’s ear for out-and-out metal fury, and ‘Disappearing God’ has thrash oozing from every pore. Throughout the album there’s speed and groove laced through ugliness. It works beautifully.